The Lean Product Strategy Grid: Your Roadmap to Product-Market Fit
Align Your Product with Customer Needs, Outmaneuver Competitors by Identifying Essential Features, and Exceed User Expectations with Innovative, Problem-Driven Offerings
Good product managers know how important it is to have a clear, actionable strategy. This Lean Product Strategy Grid template will help you cut through the noise and lock in on what really matters so you can make products that folks will love to use and that dominate the market.
Here’s what to do with the template and why we built it the way we did. This walking tour will tell you everything you need to know about how to use the product strategy tool, and everything we’ve learned along the way to make it: it takes a lot of twists and turns, but trust us, it’s worth it. This is not your typical product planning tool – it's actually a secret weapon that will have your competitors shaking in their boots.
Why Strategy Matters (Spoiler: It's Everything)
The responsibility of a Product Manager is to shepherd the development of your products through the dark, discerning into the radiant sunlight of success and profitability. We are not just creating features; we are creating the future. Without a killer strategy, you’re a ship without a rudder – lost at sea. Over the weather. sailing on into an iceberg.
However with a clear mandate – a product strategy – that responsibility can feel more reassuring. A good product strategy is like a North Star; a way to connect those high-level goals to the daily work of your team so that every decision you make is heading towards your vision. Knowing the features you are going to build is not really the product strategy; there are other inputs that go into it. It is really about the market, it is about the customer, it is about what differentiates you and why.
Escaping the Quicksand of Short-Term Thinking
Most of us have lived it: fighting fires all the time. Replying to a ton of urgent email, fixing bugs with “nine lives”, and attending customer complaints, just like Sisyphus on crack. The bane of product management is short-termism: if you’re too busy putting out fires, you can’t ever build a skyscraper. But if we let the heat of the moment rule the roost, we can make some costly mistakes.
The Lean Product Strategy Grid template serves as your ladder out of the quicksand, helping you keep your eyes on the prize even when the day-to-day madness threatens to pull you under. It is designed to help you maintain focus on the big rocks—the strategic initiatives that will drive your product’s success over time. Your goal is to ensure that the team periodically revisits this grid, reevaluating, updating, and adjusting the strategic initiatives to ensure that they remain relevant to achieving the best outcomes.
Your Blueprint for Product Domination (Or at Least Market Leadership)
Having good ideas or even great ideas for what users might want or how you can capitalize on a new market opportunity isn’t enough. You also need to be able to show how those ideas fit together, how they build on each other, and how you’ll deliver them to market with as little time as possible. With this in mind, the Lean Product Strategy Grid Template is structured and scaffolded to encourage a clear and structured approach to finding the right value proposition for your product or service.
Begin by concentrating on the Must Haves – those features that relate directly to your product’s core purpose. This is arguably the most important part of the process, because they are the bare-minimum things your users need in order to be satisfied with your product. This is your ‘do or die’ feature(s), and everything else in your plan has to be thrown in on top of this.
Then there are the Performance features of your product – things that add to expected customer value when developed further. Picture it this way: if Ford brings out a new version of its truck that gets twice the miles per gallon as Chevrolet’s truck, it is automatically a more attractive proposition, no matter what else is the same about both cars. Here you’re looking for ways to outthink the competition by doing better on the things that most directly affect user satisfaction and/or usage.
Lastly, add on Delighters – those surprising features that are not essential to deliver on your brand promise, but can serve up a large measure of unexpected customer value. Users will not expect these, but will appreciate them if present, as they distinguish your product from the masses and imbue the user experience with a unique glow.
Using a structured framework like this, allows you to confidently develop a product strategy that not only meets essential needs but also outshines competitors and delights your customers, ensuring long-term success.
Turning Strategy into Action: How to Use the Product Strategy Grid
The Lean Product Strategy Grid is your architectural model for building products that don't just satisfy – they dominate. Here's how to use this powerful tool:
Nail the Must-Haves: These are the requirements that are absolutely non-negotiable, which might make people cry out for a pitchfork if they’re not present. These are the absolute minimum essentials – the features that, if unavailable, will make your customers unhappy. Users are not likely to be thrilled to have them, but if they aren’t there, you will see high level of disconnect. If you do not get them right, you might as well go home.
Crush It on Performance: This is where you separate the wheat from the chaff. What will your product do better than anyone else? For example, if your product offers a better experience in a specific area than competitors, that’s a performance benefit. Rate your product and main competitors on a high, medium, or low scale to see where you stand and identify where you can outperform others. Find it, own it, and make the competition weep.
Surprise and Delight: Here's where you sprinkle in the magic. What unexpected feature will make your users go "Holy smokes!"? These are the features that can surprise and delight your customers, creating a strong emotional connection with your product. If you don’t have a delighter, your product won’t die – but with a delighter, your product will gain more loyal customers. This is your ticket to product love and loyalty.
Know Your Enemy: For each of your must-haves, performance benefits, and delighters, for each key competitor, create a column, and rate each competitor (high, medium, low) for each component. This helps you to better understand: where are your competitors offering an advantage, and where are they leaving opportunities? See the size of your competitors. Where are they killing it? Where are they dropping the ball? That’s where your strategy is.
Pick Your Battles: Think about where you want to really compete aggressively (go for broke) and where you can afford to be less intense. You can’t be all things to everyone, so what will you choose? Where will you go all-in, and where will you say, “Meh, this is good enough”?
Say, for instance, you are baker and decide to match the must-haves (freshness, taste and texture) of your competitors, go for broke on a given performance benefit(shelf life), while just maintaining standard on another performance benefit (nutritional enhancement) and introduce a delighter (unique flavors or ingredients, environmentally friendly packaging) that sets you apart, you would have created a product strategy that is unique and focused on being excellent at a particular customer benefit(shelf life) where you have the best comparative advantage.
Find Your Secret Sauce: Your differentiators are your kryptonite; they are what will make your product fly. Identify them, ramp them up, and watch your product fly. Your differentiators will be drawn from the performance-benefit space in which you choose to be best-in-class and the delighters you consider - using the example above, your product will be identified as a bread that is fresh with good taste and texture but also has a long shelf life with unique flavors/ingredients. This is how you will, indeed, make your product fly - by concentrating efforts and excelling in areas of weakness for your competitors while maintaining standards in their areas of strenght.
Using these steps to fill in the grid will not only make it clear what your value proposition is, but also establish that your development is targeted, strategic and moving you down the pathway to your long-term goals.
The Power of "No" (And Why It'll Save Your Product's Soul)
Here’s a bitter pill: saying “yes” to everything means saying “no” to being great. A successful product strategy is a process of narrowing down, closing in on the most important features that not only sets you apart, but also get you to product market-fit faster. It entails hard choices about where you put your limited resources.
The Lean Product Strategy Grid will force you to make those tough calls: it ain’t about doing everything – it’s about doing right things as well as you can, as fast as you can. Channel your inner Steve Jobs. Crush some dreams! (For the greater good, of course).
Learning from the Big Dogs: Strategy in Action
To see the power of a well-crafted product strategy in action, look no further than companies like Instagram and Uber. When Instagram launched, the market was already crowded with photo-sharing apps. Yet, by focusing on unique differentiators—such as fast photo uploads and visually appealing filters—Instagram quickly became the dominant player. Their strategy wasn’t just about adding features; it was about creating an experience that resonated with users on a deeper level.
Similarly, Uber disrupted the transportation industry by addressing key pain points that traditional taxis and car services couldn’t. By offering faster, more reliable service with a focus on safety and convenience, Uber positioned itself as the go-to option for urban transportation. These examples highlight the importance of having a clear, focused product strategy that addresses real customer needs and stands out in the market.
To see the power of a well-crafted product strategy in action, look no further than Instagram and Uber, which both used clear product strategies to win in crowded markets with entrenched incumbents.
When Instagram hit the market, the photo-sharing space was crowded but the app (which focused on quick photo uploads and beautiful filters) quickly became heavily used and profitable. Instagram didn’t just add a bunch of features to the photo-sharing market; it created an experience that was special, not just functional.
Likewise, Uber came along and disrupted the taxicab model by addressing complaints about traditional taxis and car services. People wanted faster and more reliable service, with a focus on safety and convenience. Uber’s product strategy was tailored to meet these needs and resonate with the rapidly changing urban consumer.
There must be a point of difference. Your product strategy should convey why your product is a clear and necessary choice. While such success stories might make disruptive innovation seem like a magic wand, there are notable failures as well. For example, the Amazon Fire Phone was introduced as a revolutionary device with unique features like dynamic perspective and Firefly technology, but it failed to gain traction due to its limited app ecosystem and lack of compelling differentiation from established competitors.
In contrast, the iPhone revolutionized the mobile phone industry by combining a sleek design with intuitive functionality and a rich ecosystem of apps. Its clear value proposition and user-friendly experience set it apart from competitors and led to widespread adoption. This highlights the importance of a well-defined product strategy in achieving market success.
Your Marching Orders: Building Product Greatness
As you dive into the Lean Product Strategy Grid with your team, keep these commandments close to your heart:
Think Long-Term: Don’t downgrade to the short term and be driven by imposed, short-run priorities. Use the grid to keep your team on target.
Embrace the Framework: Master the framework as it is one that forces every product decision through the lens of a coherent, strategic plan.
Master the Art of No: Every "no" is a "yes" to something more important. Focus is critical. The grid helps us see where our product can really stand out, so say no to anything that doesn’t aid your strategy — be that a side project or some other distraction.
Hunt for Differentiators: Usually there are two or three small things in which you can make yourself better than the other guy. Look in your grid for the unusual, the special, then crank it up to 11.
Are you ready to go build a super product? The Lean Product Strategy Grid gives you a running start!
Now let us go out there and make some magic happen!